Kingdom Hearts: The Broken Key
by TheSeer
Summary: Chapter One, 'In the Ruins of Destiny.' In the rubble of a long dead world, three children dream of flying to the stars. But one of them is having visions of glass platforms in the dark. . . [AU]


_I've been having these weird thoughts lately. Like, is any of this for real, or not?_

--

Sora saw the world breaking apart underneath him. Riku was on the other side of the crack, reaching a hand out for Sora. Sora tried to leap the crack, but it was too far, way too far. He fell into the darkness. He twisted as he fell, and saw Kairi behind him, reaching down hopelessly, screaming without sound. Sora tried to call back, and then everything was dark.

No, not everything. He was standing on a round floor, made out of colored glass. The glass made a picture, of a pale, beautiful girl in bright but tattered clothes, looking over her shoulder. Sora's heart panged. She looked like a runaway from a rich family, the type that didn't last long. Beyond the glass floor, and above it and below, was only blackness. Sora couldn't see where the light was coming from.

"Such hurry, such hurry," a voice said. Sora jumped, and looked around for whoever it was, but he was nowhere to be seen. It sounded like an old man. "No, don't be afraid. There is still a little time." That wasn't what Sora had been worried about. "The door is not yet open."

"Who are you?" Sora called. Riku said he was too trusting of strangers, but a disembodied voice in a mysterious void seemed a little creepy even to him.

"Step forward," the voice said, "if you have the courage." Sora walked into the center of the floor, and looked around. Was something supposed to happen, now?

"Aaagh!" Sora arched backwards in shock. It felt like he was being pumped full of light. It didn't hurt, exactly, but it was like someone was feeling the inside of his bones. Three long beams of light shot out of him. The longest and brightest was red, shining straight forward and back. It illuminated a sword that hung in midair off the edge of the platform in front of Sora. A golden beam flashed out to either side, almost as bright, revealing a shield on his right. The blue light shining up and down was dimmest. The odd-shaped staff above Sora was hard to see.

The light released him, and he fell to his knees, panting. "You have potential in the power of the warrior," the voice said. "Great strength is open to you, the power to fight and destroy for whatever cause your heart chooses. Is that what you want?"

"N-no," Sora said. "I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to help my friends."

"You choose defense? The power of the guardian, to protect the weak? This, too, is strong within you. But remember that destruction will always be part of your destiny. Hold fast to the light within you."

"What do you mean?"

"There is little time, and no need to strain you further just now. Step through the door."

"What door?" Sora looked around, and saw what door. He was sure that fancy, strange-looking door hadn't been standing there before. And he didn't know how it would take him anywhere, since it was standing by itself in the middle of the floor. But he opened it and slowly walked through.

"Remember, you are the one who must open the door. Don't be afraid."

There was a flash of light. Sora thought he heard the voice say one last thing, as it faded away.

"Good luck, Sora."

--

He sat straight up. "Whoa!" Kairi giggled. Sora looked up and saw her. "Give me a break, Kairi."

"Sora, you lazy bum. I knew I'd find you sleeping down here."

"No! There was this glass place, floating in the dark. . . filling me with light. I couldn't - ow!" He clutched his head, fighting sudden pain.

Kairi pushed up the hair at the back of Sora's head. There was a little metal implant in the back of his neck, and the light on it was flashing green. "You fell asleep plugged in, silly," she said. "No wonder you had weird dreams."

"It wasn't a dream!" Sora insisted. "Or was it? I don't know. What was that place? So bizarre. . ." Could he have seen another world, somehow? After all, who could say what another world would look like? "Hey, Kairi. Do you remember where you came from? What it was like?"

"I keep telling you, Sora, I don't remember."

"Nothing at all?" he pushed.

"Nothing. But I'd like to see it again someday. Especially if you're there, too."

"Yeah." Sora looked up at the sky. It was daytime, so he couldn't see the stars, but he knew they were up there. "I want to see it, too, and every other world there is. I want to see 'em all!"

"So what are we waiting for?"

"Hey, aren't you guys forgetting about me?" Riku walked down the beach, smirking. "So I guess I'm the only one working on the launch." He tossed a piece of titanium plate at Sora. Sora squawked, trying to catch it by something other than the sharp edge, and he fumbled it to the sand. "And you're just as lazy as he is," Riku said to Kairi.

"Yeah?" Kairi said. "I'll race you back up there."

Sora blinked. "Huh?" Kairi never challenged them. Riku was smirking again.

"Ready?" she said. Riku and Sora forgot their surprise, taking ready positions. "Go!" They sprinted up the beach. Kairi, laughing, picked up the hunk of metal and walked along behind them.

The beach was made of glass, not sand. It must have been hundreds of panes of glass, shattered long ago, reduced by centuries of surf to tiny grains of soft, rounded sea-glass. Towering above the shore, covering the whole of the little island, was a shattered tower of steel and concrete. The broken sign above the door said "DETINY SAPORT." A few scraggly bushes grew in crevices, but mostly the island was a place made of ruined metal and long-broken glass.

--

"You're mad, Melchior. You do realize that?"

"Kaspar. Don't you have anything better to do?"

"Better than watching you try to guide a child through the Deep Dive in forty-eight hours? No, indeed."

"I have no choice. The original candidate is growing unstable."

"Hmph. And so you settle for less? I've never taken a candidate this weak."

"Not all of us are lucky enough to recruit the Lone King. In any case, you forget the influence of the heart, which we cannot measure. If the first candidate turns out as I fear, I think his understudy will do very well."

"After going through the Dive at that speed? You'll kill him!"

"My methods are not quite so rough as yours, Kaspar. I admit there is a risk, but I have no choice. We're running out of time."

"Will you even get your two days?"

"I hope so."

--

Sora picked his way through the robot's innards, groping around among the long-dead wires. The room was full of little robots like this, about two dozen of them. They looked like they'd been made to carry things, once, but now they were all brain-dead, empty of data. Sora had seen lots of places like this, on this island and others. Robot rooms were a little spooky, but not dangerous.

Sora reached deeper in. "Come on. . . I know you're in there. . . aha!" He yanked, and ancient wire and plastic gave way. He drew his hand out, holding a hexagonal metal box. "Kairi!" he shouted, though she probably couldn't hear him from up here. "I found one!"

He ran back down through the tower, twice jumping over long gaps in the metal stairways. He skidded into the hangar. The huge metal doors were long gone, leaving the room open to the air. In the middle of the floor was the launch. It was a stubby, ugly, patched-together excuse for a machine, but if Kairi was right, it was going to take them all into space. Kairi was elbow-deep in the port ion converter.

"Kairi, I found it!" Sora called. He grabbed a screwdriver and pried the little box open. He rummaged through the parts inside, and found the one he wanted. "Here you go! One antimagnet." He held it out proudly.

Kairi studied the little grey tube, and nodded. "Thanks, Sora!" she said, smiling. Sora grinned back and scuffed his sneaker on the floor.

"What's next?"

"Um. . . I don't think I need anything else." She rubbed at her forehead. "We're almost done."

"Really?" Sora looked at the launch, and then, with a thought, plugged in - activated the implant that let him see into dataspace. A translucent copy of the launch appeared in mid-air above the real thing. They all had dataplug implants, so it was easier to make a data blueprint than to try to draw it on paper. It all glowed blue, except for the part Kairi was working on. "Wow!"

"Once I'm done here, you can help Riku close up the hull. I think he's downstairs."

"Right!" Sora ran off.

--

Riku's usual spot was a balcony with a crumbling rail, protruding from the west side of the tower. But he wasn't there. Sora ambled out to the edge and looked at the sun on the sea.

"Eager to leave?"

Sora turned around, and saw Riku coming up behind him. "Yeah! Kairi says the launch is just about done. She's amazing! We're really going to travel to other worlds! I can't wait."

"Neither can I." Riku rested his arms on the railing. "I hate this world."

Sora frowned. "It's not that bad. I mean, our lives haven't been wonderful or anything, but. . . it's still home, right?"

"Mama's boy."

"Shut up," Sora said, rolling his eyes. It was basically true. Sora was one of the rare kids whose mother had really taken care of him. He'd even met his father a couple times. Riku didn't remember his mother, didn't even know whether she'd died or just abandoned him. When Kairi appeared, at age six, she'd been adopted by a man who called himself "The Mayor." But Riku had helped her run away after a year, and she never talked about what had happened before then.

But still, living on your own wasn't that bad. It was hard to starve in the Ruins -before they'd been ruins, there must have been millions of people, because there were still millions of eterna-sealed cans of food everywhere. And there were always a few adults or crews willing to make sure a little kid had the bare minimum in clothes and stuff.

"Anyway," Sora said, "I'm with your crew, now. I haven't heard from Mom since we moved here. For all I know, she could be dead." He didn't sound nearly as casual about that as he wanted to, though.

"I hate this place," Riku said again. "There have to be worlds out there where everything isn't broken, where there's something better to do than crawl in the wreckage and wonder when the food will run out. Somewhere I can actually be something."

"Be something? You're the boss of the coolest crew in the Ruins! We've got a _spaceship!_"

"I wonder if it'll matter," Riku muttered, too soft for Sora to quite hear.

"What?" Sora said. Then he thought of something, and grinned. "Did you say you don't want to be the boss any more?"

"Yeah, right. You'll pay for that." There were two lengths of plastic pipe on the floor, left here from last time. Riku hooked one with his foot and tossed it to Sora, taking the other himself. He raised it to a fighting position, high and point-forward.

Sora held his own "sword" low, with both hands. "Call out," he said, the traditional words of challenge.

"Come and try," Riku answered back. In some crews, the challenge was deadly serious, and sometimes the response was "Come and die." In Riku's crew it was a game, because Riku always won everything. But Sora still tried.

He struck first, trying to make Riku step back, toward the iffy railing. But Riku parried him to the side, and then Sora found himself stepping backwards instead. Riku's quick slashes got by his guard, smacking him in the shoulder, in the knee. Sora tried a wild horizontal slash, and managed to clip Riku's hip by sheer dint of surprise. Then he rolled to the side, trying to get his back away from the edge. When he stood up, Riku's pipe crashed down on his head.

"Oww!" Sora felt the bump with his free hand.

"Yield?"

Sora shook his head. "Two out of three?" he started to say. But before he got out the last word, everything went black.

--

He was back in the dark place, standing on another picture of colored glass. This one showed a different girl, in fine yellow clothes that didn't quite fit. She was looking up at something, and it made her nervous. A tower, Sora thought, or a large and dangerous man. He didn't think of a beast, because the Destiny Ruins had no animals that big.

"Are you ready?" It was the voice of the old man again.

"Ready for what?" Suddenly Sora realized he was holding something, the shield he'd seen last time. It made his hands tingle.

"The darkness is always waiting." Four cages of twining light appeared around Sora. They opened and dissolved, releasing little shadow-things. They looked clumsy and misshapen, out of place. But they eyed Sora and started forward. "Don't be afraid."

"Easy for you to say," Sora muttered. The things were obviously trouble. One swiped at him, and Sora batted its paw away with the shield. It stumbled, and Sora charged after it, slashing it four times in quick succession with the point on the bottom of the shield. The shadow dissipated, and a bright stream of. . . something, faintly pink, rose up from it and vanished.

He turned and faced the other three. "Come and get it!" Of course, they did. But Sora parried every attack, and wore the shadows away with counter-swings. When the last one was gone, he straightened up, letting the shield hang from his hand. "What were those things?" he said. By now he wasn't expecting any answers out of the voice, he was just talking to himself. "They didn't even have bodies. They were like smoke, or ghosts. Or data."

"Very soon," the voice said, "you will have to open the door. Unless. . . " It stopped, and then said only, "Remember the light." The shield disappeared from Sora's hand. He looked around, and saw a door waiting for him. He stepped through.

--

"Sora! Wake up!"

"Riku?" Sora was back on the balcony, lying on his back.

"You passed out," Riku said, sounding relieved. "I didn't hit you _that_ hard, did I?"

"No," Sora said. "I was - ow!" He clutched his head. It suddenly felt like it had a spike through it. "Ahh! That hurts! Oh, man, ow. Ow!"

"Sora!" He couldn't answer, he just rolled on the ground, moaning. "Come on, Sora." Riku grabbed him under the arms, and helped him stand. He dragged Sora inside. "You need some rest. Come on." Sora staggered along, not even seeing where they were going. "Okay, lie down."

"Huh? This the bedroom?"

"Yeah. Just rest, Sora. You need to be strong." He helped Sora lie on the bed, and pried off his shoes. Sora curled up in the pile of blankets and pillows.

Sora looked blearily at Riku. "'Cause we're blasting off soon?"

Riku hesitated. "Maybe. _Something's_ going to happen soon. I can feel it." His hand curled, as though it expected to hold something. "It has to be soon."

"Open the door," Sora murmured, remembering the voice in the dark.

Riku jumped. "What?" Sora didn't answer. Riku stared at him for a few seconds, and said, "Remember to unplug before you fall asleep." Sora turned off his implant, still dizzy from the pain, and as the world became emptier, he slowly fell asleep.

--

"I hate to accuse a colleague of plagarism, Melchior, but that looks awfully familiar."

"Yes, it's the Kingdom Key, or an altered version of it. I'm in a hurry. The blade must be complete before I can proceed."

"Couldn't you adapt the design you had before?"

"The Daybreak is completely unsuitable. A Warrior-Sorcerer blade, when I need a Guardian."

"And when your Guardian shatters at the bottom of the Dive? Who will you choose, then?"

"He'll survive."

"I hope it won't be the princess."

"I'm not a complete fool, Kaspar. Now, go away. I'm busy."

--

When Sora woke up, the pain was gone. Someone was holding his hand, tight. Someone was stroking his cheek, very gently. He opened his eyes.

It was dark, except for the cold-lamp by the bed. Kairi and Riku were sitting on either side of him. Kairi was the one holding his hand, and she smiled when she saw he was awake. There was no sign of who the other touch had been. Riku was on that side, but he was frowning. "Sora," he said, "I. . ." He stopped, and looked at Kairi. She gave him a little "go ahead" motion. "I'm sorry," he said. "I shouldn't have been so rough."

"It's not your fault," Sora said. "We were just playing. You've hit me harder than that before, lots of times." It was those stupid dreams, he was sure of it.

Riku muttered something that sounded like "That's what _I_ said." Kairi glared at him.

"Obviously not, since he's never knocked you out before," Kairi said. Then she frowned thoughtfully. "Unless there's something else? Do you feel sick?"

The last time he'd tried to talk about the dreams, she'd teased him. "Um, not really," he said. Which was true, he felt fine now. She still looked suspicious. "How's the launch coming?" he asked, to distract her.

"It's done!" she said. "I got the converter working, and Riku sealed the hull. I want to test it tomorrow, but it should all work. All we need is supplies."

"Awesome!" Sora looked up at the ceiling. "So, Kairi's home is out there somewhere, right?"

"Could be," Riku said. "We'll never know by staying here."

"So, suppose you get to another world," Kairi said. "What would you do there?"

"Well, I haven't really thought about it," Riku said. "It's just. . . I've always wondered why we're here on these islands. Is this really what life is supposed to be like? Isn't there something better? I mean, if there are other worlds, why did we end up _here_?"

"I don't know," Sora said.

"That's why we need to go find out. Staying here, nothing will ever change, until one of us gets sick, or something breaks, or someone gets a hold of Kairi. So let's go."

"You've been thinking a lot lately, haven't you?" Kairi said.

"Thanks to you. If you hadn't come here, I never would have thought of any of this. Kairi, thanks." Riku laid down beside Sora, and pulled part of the blankets over himself.

Kairi did the same thing on the other side, and tapped out the light. "You're welcome," she said. Sora looked from one to the other and smiled. They didn't really have to sleep so close any more. This island was safe - no one else lived here. And they had enough blankets and mattresses to make up three beds. But Kairi and Riku had lived on their own for years in Mayor's Harbor and the Docks. Sleeping alone made them nervous. Anyway, it was cozier this way.

Sora had just woken up, so it took him a while to get back to sleep. He stared up at the dark ceiling, listening to his friends breathe.


End file.
